[Techtalk] sendmail/RBL question

Akkana akkana at shallowsky.com
Thu Mar 28 16:29:50 EST 2002


Raven, corporate courtesan writes:
> 	Here's my take on blackhole lists in general.  Nobody is forcing
> you to use them, or not use them.

I thought the RBL sounded like a great idea, the first time I heard
about it.  Right on, let's keep spam from flowing.

Then I moved my domain, including a mailing list I administer, to a
new ISP, which did aggressive spam filtering (not using the RBL, but
a similar concept).

It was a constant headache, because I was forever dealing with list
members who discovered that they couldn't post because some provider
upstream of them ran an open relay and had gotten blackholed.
They had no pull with the several-jumps-upstream provider, and in
several cases, these were people who lived in rural areas where they
had only one choice of ISP and did not have the option of using a
different provider.  The worst part about it was that these people
couldn't even inform me of the problem, because their mail to me
bounced due to the blackhole.

Finally I got tired of it, and moved my domain and the list to my home
server (on a slowish DSL connection) where I have control over the mail.
Although I hate spam and wish I could stop it, I'm not willing to block
all the people who are stuck downstream from irresponsible providers
through no fault of their own.

I'm still glad that people like Paul Vixie are trying to do something
about spam.  It doesn't seem likely our legislators will any time
soon.  I'd like to use one of the blackhole lists myself (when I get
time to set it up) -- but only to filter mail to a separate folder
where I can check for false positives.

	...Akkana



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